Files You Share in a Chat Are Not in the Channel

Questions

  • Why can a coworker not see the file I sent in Microsoft Teams?
  • Where do files I share in a Teams chat actually get stored?
  • What is the difference between a chat file and a channel file?
  • What happens to files shared in a chat when the person who sent them leaves the College?
  • Where does Microsoft Teams save a meeting recording?
  • How do I move a file out of a chat and into a channel?
  • Someone I added to a group chat cannot open a file posted last month. Why not?
  • The file from our conversation is missing from the channel's Shared tab. Where is it?
  • As a department administrator, where should I put a document the office will need next year?

Environment

This article applies to Bowdoin College faculty and staff using Microsoft Teams with a Bowdoin account. It covers one-to-one chats, group chats, meeting chats, and standard channels.

  • People: Bowdoin faculty and staff who share documents with colleagues in Microsoft Teams.
  • Systems: Microsoft Teams, the SharePoint library behind each team, and OneDrive for work or school, reached after signing in at https://office365.bowdoin.edu. Storage locations behave the same in the Microsoft Teams desktop app and in a web browser, but menu labels differ slightly between versions.
  • Computers: Bowdoin-issued Windows 11 computers and Bowdoin-issued Macs running macOS Sequoia (15.x), Tahoe (26.x), or newer, plus iPad running the current version of iPadOS. Personal computers are supported on a best-effort basis only.
  • Labels: in some versions of Microsoft Teams a channel's Shared tab is labeled Files. Both labels open the same place.
  • Also in scope: private channels and shared channels, which store files in their own separate locations. A file posted in a private channel is not in the main team library either.
  • Not in scope: sharing a file with people outside Bowdoin, which is covered in Share a File or Folder from Teams or OneDrive in the Related Articles section.

Resolution

Chat files and channel files go to two different places

Microsoft states the difference plainly. Files you upload to a channel are stored in your team's SharePoint folder, and files you send in a chat are stored in your own OneDrive for work or school and are shared only with the people in that conversation.

  • A channel file belongs to the team. Anyone with access to the channel can open the file, and the file stays in the channel when a member leaves the College.
  • A chat file belongs to you. The file sits in your OneDrive, and the people in the chat hold a share link to your copy. Nobody else can find a chat file, and a chat file does not appear on the channel's Shared tab.

Ownership is the reason a colleague you add to a group chat today cannot see the file you posted in that chat last month. The share link went to the people who were in the conversation at the time, and a later member is not on that list.

Tell whether the file in front of you is a chat file or a channel file

  1. Select the file to open it, then choose More options ("...") and select Open in SharePoint or Open file location.
  2. Read where you land. A team's SharePoint site means the file is a channel file. Your own OneDrive, or a colleague's OneDrive, means the file is a chat file.

A faster check is to open the channel's Shared tab and look for the file by name. A file that is not listed on the Shared tab is not a channel file, whatever the conversation above it suggests.

What happens when the sender leaves the College or deletes the file

Because a chat file lives in one person's OneDrive, the file depends on that person's account continuing to exist. When someone leaves Bowdoin their OneDrive is eventually removed, and every chat file that person ever shared stops opening for everyone else. The chat messages stay in place; the files behind the messages break. To ask for files that belonged to a colleague who has left, see Get a Colleague's Files After They Leave Bowdoin in the Related Articles section.

The person who sent a chat file can also delete the file from their OneDrive at any time, without warning anyone. Deleting removes the file for everyone in the chat, because there was only ever one copy. Deleted items are recoverable for 93 days, but only by the person who owns them.

Important: A file shared only in a chat survives exactly as long as one person's account does. Anything your department will need next year belongs in a channel.

Why a chat is the wrong place for department files

A chat is a good place for a draft you want a second opinion on, a screenshot, or something disposable. A chat is the wrong place for anything the department needs to keep, for four reasons:

  • A chat file is invisible to everyone outside the conversation, including the person who takes over your job.
  • A chat file cannot be organized, tagged, or found by anyone browsing the team.
  • A chat file's survival depends on one person's account.
  • No Team owner can review or manage a chat file.

Sharing a file in a chat is a convenience for a conversation, not a way of filing something.

Move a chat file into a channel

Do not download a chat file and upload it again. Downloading and re-uploading creates a second, disconnected copy and leaves the original in the sender's OneDrive, so later edits split between the two copies.

Add the file to the channel's library instead, so the team owns the file, and let the chat message go stale. For the steps, see Move Files into a Microsoft Teams Channel in the Related Articles section. To decide where in the team the file belongs, see A Starter Folder Structure for a Department Team in the Related Articles section. Once the file is in a channel, share the channel location rather than attaching the file to a new message.

Where meeting files and meeting recordings are saved

Meeting files follow the same pattern as chat files, which surprises people after a meeting has ended.

  • A file attached in a meeting chat is a chat file, stored in the OneDrive of whoever posted it.
  • For a meeting or an event, the recording saves to the organizer's OneDrive, in a folder named Recordings. The recording goes to the organizer even if the organizer did not attend, and regardless of who pressed record. Other attendees from Bowdoin get read-only access, and people outside Bowdoin get no access unless the organizer shares the recording with them.
  • For a channel meeting, the recording goes to the team's SharePoint site in a Recordings folder, and permissions come from the channel's owners and members.
Note: Hold the meeting in a channel when the recording matters to the department. A recording of a meeting that was not held in a channel leaves with the organizer.

A rule of thumb for deciding where a file goes

If losing a file would be a problem for anyone other than you, post the file in a channel. If the honest answer to losing it is that the office would just ask a colleague to send it again, the file belongs in a channel too.

Additional Help

If you need further assistance, you have several options:

  • Bowdoin Bot: Chat with Bowdoin Bot directly from any KB page for instant answers.
  • Phone: Call the Bowdoin College Service Desk at (207) 725-3030.
  • In person: Visit the Tech Hub in Smith Union during business hours.
  • Submit a ticket: Request assistance through the Service Catalog.

Additional Resources

 

 

AI-assisted content: This article was created with AI. It was verified and edited by a human.
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